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1964 The British musical thrived, even if commercial and artistic success didn't always match up. A skilfully assembled costume romance about two love-crazed Victorian writers, Robert and Elizabeth, introduced the composer Ron Grainer as a front-line writer, and helped Keith Michell and June Bronhill to the musical roles of their careers. The score had flavour, although no real hits emerged from it, and the production sometimes verged on the sensational. The public flocked to it. The public then lost all credibility by flocking to Instant Marriage, a terrible affair presented by Brian Rix. It seemed to believe in an audience of Bank Holiday coach parties, and wasn't proved wrong. One of the weakest and most rudimentary pieces to play in London in the 1960s, its run must even have mystified its cast, among whom Joan Sims and Stephanie Voss shared some embarrassing moments. Taken from J. M. Barrie's The Admirable Crchton, Our Man Crichton matched Kenneth More (as the butler who assumes control over his masters when they are shipwrecked on a desert island) and Millicent Martin as the tweeny with a romantic keenness for Mr Crichton. The piece and its songs clearly were not quite good enough, although it had a handsome production, a very good supporting performance from Patricia Lambert and stayed for six months without ever catching on. Lionel Bart's Maggie May tried for seriousness in a way nothing he had written before had quite done, and there was a vibrant central performance from Rachel Roberts as the Liverpool prostitute. But the songs were generally second-rate, and sometimes feeble, even silly. There was enough of interest to keep it going through three changes of leading lady (Georgia Brown and Judith Bruce) before Maggie May was forgotten. Norman Wisdom was the star of the new Anthony Newley-Leslie Bricusse piece, The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, which suggested the writers were out to repeat themselves. It closed on the road, although the show went on to New York and commercial success with Newley at the top of the cast. A revival of Salad Days was seen quickly at Hammersmith. Revues were thin, a sure sign that the genre was dying. Seven-Bob-a-Buck went on at Hammersmith, and a mime-infested piece, Chaganog, managed to get into London for a brief play. The American musical trampled onwards. Lerner and Loewe's Camelot was a work of considerable tedium, relieved by some nice-enough songs, but the general impression was of overlong operetta. The British cast was hardly of the first quality, but the grandeur of the production slightly bewitched audiences, who kept it at Drury Lane for over a year. Much more vital and amusing was a musical satire from the novel by Patrick Dennis, Little Me, a sort of male version of the Hollywood star pastiche of Grab Me a Gondola. But Little Me was much more artfully done, and had two super star performances from Bruce Forsythe and Eileen Gourlay. The writers of British musicals might have been alerted to start writing for these new stars, but nothing happened. The adaptation of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit enjoyed much less success than it had found on Broadway, where Beatrice Lillie had made the role of the medium Madame Arcati very much her own. In London, Cicely Courtneidge struggled at the head of the British cast of High Spirits. The press didn't like it and the public weren't bothered to find out for themselves. The score was very patchy. Much more skill went into the preparation of the chamber musical She Loves Me, but in London somehow it didn't take fire. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's score had much that was excellent in it, and the production was competently cast, with Anne Rogers not coming up to the Broadway expertise of its original leading lady Barbara Cook. It had a moderate run. There was almost instant oblivion for an American version of Sheridan's The Rivals, All in Love, stuck at the May Fair Theatre. Its cast included Annie Ross, Peter Pratt, Peter Gilmore, Ronnie Barker and James Fox. |